The C* Word

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The Best Influencer Marketing Agencies Are Influencer Advocates

KristySammis•February 7, 2020

This week, a Digiday article highlighted the rancor some influencers feel when they can no longer maintain one-to-one relationships with brands. Digiday posits that it’s the result of a maturing of the influencer marketing industry—and we agree. In the article, CLEVER founder and Influencer Marketing Association Executive Director Kristy Sammis says, “Influencer marketing has finally matured as an industry. Brands are now willing to allocate significant budgets to strategic influencer programs. This means they need scale, benchmarks, and guarantees. That’s simply not possible with one-on-one influencer relationships.”

But this isn’t a new issue. Our industry has matured, and we see that as a positive. Influencer marketing is now proven and trusted. A good influencer marketing agency won’t try to place limits on influencers’ creativity, but will educate brands on allowing influencers to have as much creative freedom as possible. A good influencer marketing agency will also educate brands on why they should pay influencers fairly for the work (yes, it’s work) they are doing. In short, a good influencer marketing agency will be a strong advocate for influencers’ creative and compensation wants and needs.

At CLEVER, we understand influencers deeply, because our founders and much of our staff are influencers themselves. We live and breathe social media. That’s the difference between our agency (which has a managed services agency model in addition to our solid tech offerings), and an algorithm-powered platform. In the end, influencers are humans, not ad units, and we believe humans tell the best brand stories.